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Post by Admin on Oct 6, 2021 0:30:50 GMT
Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe is betting that Taylor Swift fans can help prevent his state from turning red. The Democrat, who is running for the seat again on Nov. 2, has a new five-figure ad buy that connects his opponent, Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, to Swift's bitter battle to gain control over the master recordings of her first six albums, including Fearless, Red and 1989. Youngkin is the former co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, which financially backed the 2019 sale of Swift's masters to Ithaca Holdings, an umbrella company owned at the time by music manager Scooter Braun. Swift's masters have since been sold again. Not everyone will see the ads connecting "T-Mac" and "T-Swift." They'll appear on Facebook and Instagram for users who engage with Swift's content and on Google when people in Virginia search for her name. The Facebook ads appropriate the rallying cry #WeStandWithTaylor adopted by Swift's fans, also known as Swifties, during the battle over her music. A handful of recent polls show that neither candidate is out of the woods, yet. McAuliffe has a narrow lead over Youngkin less than a month out from elections seen as a national bellwether.  Youngkin spokesperson Christian Martinez dismissed the attack as "pathetic." "Terry McAuliffe has reached the stage of desperation in his campaign where he's rolling out the most baseless attacks to see what sticks," Martinez said in a statement. In 2019, The New York Times reported that the Carlyle Group helped broker a deal between Swift and Braun for him to allow her to perform some of the songs from her catalog at the 2019 American Music Awards, where she received the award for Artist of the Decade. That particular clash even drew attention from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who said in a tweet that Swift "is one of many whose work has been threatened by a private equity firm." McAuliffe has attacked Youngkin's career at Carlyle but is himself an investor in the company. In July, The Associated Press reported that McAuliffe invested at least $690,000 in Carlyle funds between December 2007 and the end of 2016. Campaign spokesperson Renzo Olivari said McAuliffe was a "passive" Carlyle investor by 2019, at the time of the sale of Swift's masters, and now owns less than $5,000 in Carlyle stock. Since the sale of her masters, Swift has been busy rerecording and releasing her own versions of her music. Fearless (Taylor's Version) was released in April complete with six tracks "from the vault" that didn't make it into the original album in 2008. The next rerelease, Red (Taylor's Version), is expected out Nov. 12, a week earlier than she previously announced it would be. |
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Post by Admin on Oct 8, 2021 21:29:54 GMT
In campaign ads, Republican Glenn Youngkin boasts that he spent the last three decades “building business and creating jobs, leading a team of nearly 2,000 people who trusted me to get things done.” As co-CEO of the private equity firm the Carlyle Group, Youngkin was also party to one of the most contentious music rights disputes in recent memory — Scooter Braun’s purchase of Big Machine, the record label where Taylor Swift recorded her early hits.
Now, 25 days out from election day, that sordid history is becoming a central plot point in the closely contested race for Virginia governor. It also led to a frantic scramble to yank merchandise emblazoned with a Swift trademark. Earlier this week, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe — seeking a second non-consecutive term in office — launched a five-figure ad buy on Facebook, Instagram and Google, drawing attention to Youngkin’s role in the fight over Taylor Swift’s back catalogue.
To review: back in 2019, Braun’s Ithaca Holdings acquired Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group in a deal financially underwritten by the Carlyle Group. Under the agreement, the masters for Swift’s first six albums became Braun’s property. Swift — who has a long, unhappy personal history with both Braun and his clients Justin Bieber and Kanye West — was devastated. She posted a lengthy statement appealing to Youngkin and his colleagues at Carlyle to pull out of the deal. “I’m especially asking for help from the Carlyle Group, who put up the money for the sale of my music to these two men,” the popstar wrote on Tumblr at the time. “I just want to be able to perform my own music.”
The deal ultimately went through, despite Swift’s public pleas, to which Youngkin never publicly responded. (At the time, Youngkin’s co-CEO, Kewsong Lee, defended Carlyle’s financing of the deal, saying, “I’ve got every confidence in the world that it’s going to turn out to be a successful investment.”) Swift, who decided to re-record her first six albums in an effort to prevent Braun from profiting from her music, would go on to call out both Carlyle and the private equity industry more broadly after the sale. “Private equity is what enabled this man to think… that he could buy me,” Swift said in a speech at the Billboard Music awards that year. (A rep for Youngkin did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)
The McAuliffe campaign ads, which feature Swift’s image and plays on her lyrics (e.g. “’Cause Glenn, now we got bad blood…” and “Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes”), debuted earlier this week and are micro-targeted at Swift fans and anyone else who searches her name. The Virginia Democratic Party, backing McAuliffe’s bid, even got in on the fun with tweets like, “There’s bad blood between @taylorswift13 and @glennyoungkin. Glenn has made clear that he will rip anyone off in order to make a profit. If he’ll do this to Taylor Swift — he’ll do it to Virginians.”
Ironically, though, the McAuliffe campaign did not secure Swift’s permission ahead of launching an ad campaign skewering Youngkin for profiting off the popstar’s work and image without her consent. (A spokesperson for McAuliffe confirmed to Rolling Stone earlier this week that the campaign had not had “direct contact” with Swift’s team prior to the ad buy.)
Virginia Democrats would have good reason to believe Swift would bless the effort — after all, she is clearly not a fan of the Carlyle Group and has been vocally supportive of Democratic candidates. (She threw her full weight of her star power, for example, behind the Senate candidacy of Phil Bredesen in her home state of Tennessee back in 2018.)
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Post by Admin on Oct 9, 2021 21:51:16 GMT
Weeks before Virginia’s gubernatorial election, the campaign for Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe is reaching out to an unexpected constituency: Taylor Swift fans. :format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22902614/unnamed_1.png) On Tuesday, the McAulliffe campaign launched a series of Facebook, Instagram, and Google search ads highlighting his opponent Glenn Youngkin’s role in the controversial purchase of Taylor Swift’s master recordings in 2019. The buyout of Swift’s masters has been a point of bitter contention for the singer and her fans and could be an unexpected liability in the upcoming race. Last year, Youngkin — the Republican nominee for Virginia governor — retired as co-CEO of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group before launching his 2021 gubernatorial bid. At Carlyle, Youngkin worked with the media executive Scooter Braun to acquire Big Machine Label Group, taking control of all of Swift’s master recordings and, for a time, refusing to sell them back to the singer. Several months later, Swift called on Carlyle to intervene in the deal, saying that the acquisition made it more difficult for her to perform her own music and produce her Netflix documentary named after her record Reputation. Terry for Virginia In a Tumblr post at the time, Swift wrote that the purchase of her masters put Braun in the position of “controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity.” The McAuliffe five-figure ad buy will target voters who like Swift and engage with her content across Facebook and Instagram, according to the campaign. They will also place ads in Google search results for Virginians that search for her name. The ads include images of Swift and Youngkin interlaid with the hashtag #WeStandWithTaylor, a popular tag used by fans and Swifties to show support throughout the artist’s battle with Braun. Last November, Braun sold the rights to a separate private equity firm in a deal believed to be worth more than $300 million, according to Variety. As of October, the Virginia gubernatorial race is in a dead heat. According to FiveThirtyEight’s most recent poll analysis, McAuliffe is projected to win 47 percent of the vote, whereas Youngkin is projected to win 44 percent, putting either candidate in striking distance of a win. |
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Post by Admin on Oct 10, 2021 21:48:51 GMT
 After Terry McAuliffe’s Virginia gubernatorial campaign released a social media campaign pointing out Glenn Youngkin’s role in purchasing Taylor Swift’s master recordings back in 2019, the Democratic Party of Virginia recently started selling a line of “Swifties Against Youngkin” merchandise, which included hoodies, mugs, and buttons emblazoned with the phrase in bright pink. This morning, the Twitter account belonging to the Democratic Party of Virginia pointed followers to the new items: “tis the damn season to get your swifties against youngkin merchandise,” the tweet read, with a link to its online store. But then the merchandise was yanked from the website with no explanation. At first, the products disappeared but there was still a category listed for “Swifties Against Youngkin” items. Later, that too was scrubbed from the site. The Democratic Party of Virginia’s tweet about the products was also deleted. So what happened? At the moment, it’s a mystery. A spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Virginia declined to comment, and Taylor Swift’s publicist has not yet responded to our queries. Youngkin was previously the co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, which funded the purchase of Swift’s master recordings, though a Youngkin rep says that he was not personally involved in the deal. Swift has been very public about her dissatisfaction with the situation, to the point where she has been re-recording her first six studio albums so fans can listen to versions that belong to her. She released “Taylor’s Version” of the 2008 album Fearless this past April, and is putting out her version of the 2012 album Red next month. McAuliffe’s campaign has been trying to use Swift-fan ire against Youngkin through its digital campaign, as well as tweeting out references to Swift songs and coopting the hashtag #WeStandWithTaylor. |
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Post by Admin on Oct 16, 2021 20:04:41 GMT
 Terry McAuliffe, the former governor of Virginia, is vying for another shot at leading the commonwealth, a place that bars governors from serving successive terms. Earlier this year, the seasoned candidate -- whose story in the Democratic Party is defined by millions of dollars raised, the Clintons and a tenure as chair of the Democratic National Committee -- held his ground among a primary field of younger, more liberal challengers, proving that, at least in Virginia, Democrats aren't yet tired of longtime politicians. McAuliffe has rolled out policy after policy, aiming to both burnish his progressive credentials and argue that because Virginia is now in Democratic control, something he did not enjoy during his tenure, he will be able to get more done the second time around. Both Democratic politics and Virginia have changed since McAuliffe's successful 2013 run, a shift exemplified by the state's Democratic legislature -- which went blue in 2019 with McAuliffe's help. Since Democrats won control, they have moved to abolish the death penalty, tighten gun laws and reckon with the legacy of the Confederacy. Running on a platform that prioritizes rebounding from the Covid-19 pandemic when it comes to both the economy and access to quality health care, housing and educational opportunities, McAuliffe has firmly stated he is pro-vaccine requirements and lambasted his opponent, Glenn Youngkin, over the Republican's opposition to mandating Covid-19 vaccines for state workers. McAuliffe has said he would require vaccines for students, teachers and health care workers and would support businesses that imposed mandates. A staple in Democratic politics McAuliffe, who served as governor of Virginia from 2014 to 2018, has been a staple in Democratic politics for decades. Before putting his own name on the ballot, McAuliffe had long been a prolific Democratic fundraiser and adviser, with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton. McAuliffe would often boast of raising around $275 million for an assortment of Clinton efforts, including both of Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns and Hillary Clinton's first Senate campaign. He later was chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2005, before serving as chair of Hillary Clinton's failed 2008 presidential bid. The former governor's 2021 bid will be his third for governor. McAuliffe mounted a failed bid in 2009, losing the Democratic primary to state Sen. Creigh Deeds (who went on to lose to Republican Bob McDonnell). Four years later, McAuliffe ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. He focused intently on bringing business to Virginia during his four years in office, often touting the economic success he had during his tenure, such as bringing 200,000 new jobs to Virginia, he says. He often sparred with the state's Republican-controlled legislature, vetoing a record number of bills. He ended his time in office by restoring voting rights for thousands of formerly convicted felons in Virginia. And McAuliffe, who was governor when Donald Trump was elected to the presidency in 2016, became one of many Democratic governors who worked to oppose much of what Trump's administration attempted. Following his time as governor, he was also previously a CNN commentator. McAuliffe, after considering a presidential run himself, endorsed Joe Biden during the 2020 Democratic primary and was considered for a Cabinet post in the Biden administration. In 2020, Biden referred to McAuliffe as the "once and future governor of Virginia." Since taking office, Biden has stumped for McAuliffe and in June told Virginians they had to make him their state's governor again. "You got to elect him again, and I mean this, not just for Virginia, for the country. The country is looking, these off-year elections, the country's looking. This is a big deal," Biden said at the time. |
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